


Waves Wash Over

by ClockworkCourier



Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fix-It, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Groundhog Day, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Multi, Multiple Pairings, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Spoilers, Symbolism, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Trippy Dreams
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-09-16 12:02:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16953630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkCourier/pseuds/ClockworkCourier
Summary: And if you had a choice?asks the stag.Would you choose this? Rest, alleviation from your suffering, and the ability to watch over those who you have aided?“You’re makin’ it sound like there’s an alternative.”- - -Arthur Morgan gets another chance. And another. And another.





	1. The Stag and the Coyote

**Author's Note:**

> this was actually a tumblr prompt from a lovely anon: "hi i'm a sucker for time loops/fix-its and i was wondering if you could do one for rdr2? i think it would be cool." and two days later, groundhog day was on TV, so i figured it was an omen.
> 
> so yeah, standard warning for spoilers and the fact that arthur's time loops end with him dying and all that'll entail. i promise he gets a happy ending, but i can't guarantee how happy he'll be until then. >:3c also warning for trippy, TRIPPY dreams and flowery prose, i guess.
> 
> (and no pairings yet because i haven't figured that out/testing the waters to see what people like.)

Arthur Morgan dies, and then he dreams.  
  
It isn’t what he expects, but then again, his preconceived notions were hazy at best. He supposes that heaven’s the most desirable option people would aspire to get, what with the eternal happiness and all. That’s fine, and even after all is said and done and his last tuberculed breath goes out into the ether, he hopes for the best for those people. And he knows all about damnation, having been threatened with it on multiple occasions. It’s not something people typically want, but seems to be more or less the kind of thing people resign themselves to.  
  
Arthur doesn’t think he’s damned, really. Then again, what he dreams about isn’t heaven, either. If it is, then it’s going to disappoint a few folks.  
  
His dream looks like it takes place just outside of Colter. There’s snow on the ground, a foot or so thick and covered with a sparkling crust. Black pines creak and shiver under thick coats of the stuff. There’s a river curved through the midst like a tarnished metal fish hook, and a glossy haze hovers over it like a veil, rocking gently in wind Arthur can’t feel. The sky is—  
  
Well, the sky is the only thing that makes Arthur think this might really be heaven after all. It’s a blaze of light, a perfect sunrise frozen in place; so golden that it outshines every damn nugget, bar, and coin in the entire world. The rest of the sky is a dark powdery blue, and the last stars cling to it like desperate little survivors, not eager to be outshone just yet. Arthur stares and stares, mouth open, lungs unmoving, heart as still as a placid lake in his chest.  
  
He doesn’t see the stag appear. It just _does_ , like another beam in the sunrise, cast down through the trees as though it’s been there all along. Arthur isn’t surprised to see it, standing in the moving river and gazing at him with milk-white eyes. The sun is balanced on the curve of its antlers.  
  
_Arthur Morgan,_ it says.  
  
Or, he thinks it does. The sound fills the air, resonating off the mountain pass and the trees and the river itself. It speaks in a man’s voice, in a woman’s, in a child’s, in Arthur’s own voice, and in the voice of every person he’s ever known. Somehow, it makes sense. And then, it doesn’t make a lick of sense at all.  
  
_Your time is at an end. Were you pleased? Did you do all that you wanted?_  
  
Arthur opens his mouth to speak, but it’s awfully difficult to talk without being able to breathe. His voice is still as a stone in his throat, and he’s not sure what to do. The stag tilts its head, and Arthur swears the sun tilts with it.  
  
_Speak, and rest it on the wind._  
  
Before Arthur can puzzle that over, the wind picks up around them, lifting huge plumes of fresh powder into the air, caught in the sunlight and rendered like molten gold. It shifts through the trees, making their boughs hiss and creak. And it runs through Arthur, through his ribs which are close enough to the surface of his skin that he doesn’t feel so different from the pines.  
  
“Oh,” he hears himself say. “Huh.” Honestly, there’s not much else to say in regards to breathing on the wind; it’s a fairly unique feeling.  
  
_My question remains,_ says the stag.  
  
Arthur frowns, breathes with the pines, and shrugs. “Suppose there’s not much else I coulda done,” he says.  
  
_You weren’t pleased?_  
  
“Lotta good folk got killed.” Arthur ducks his head a bit, stares down at his boots, still spattered with clods of dirt and blood from the mountain. “Makes me think of somethin’ Hosea used to say.”  
  
He doesn’t know if the stag knows Hosea, but somehow, he’s sure it does.  
  
_No unnecessary suffering,_ says the stag in Hosea’s voice, and in its own voice of multitudes. _That’s what he said._  
  
“Yeah. Don’t think that came to pass.”  
  
_So, you weren’t satisfied with your life._  
  
In the corner of his eye, Arthur can see a dark shape begin to stalk in the shadows underneath the trees. He doesn’t need to look at it to know what it is.  
  
He shrugs again. “Can’t say for sure. I mean, is anyone really happy with all they’ve done?”  
  
_Some die with no regrets.  
  
_“Those folks are lucky, I suppose,” Arthur replies, watching the gnarled creature trot alongside the river, minding the stag like it’s waiting its turn. “I mean, I don’t regret what I did for John and the like.”  
  
_But you regret._  
  
“‘Course,” Arthur says. “That ain’t a secret.”  
  
_And if you had a choice?_ asks the stag. _Would you choose this? Rest, alleviation from your suffering, and the ability to watch over those who you have aided?_  
  
At that moment, a blue jay flits upwards to perch on pine bough. It sits, tilting its head one way, then another, in that quickstep way that birds do. Arthur gets the feeling that its waiting for an answer.  
  
“You’re makin’ it sound like there’s an alternative.”  
  
The creature on the riverbank suddenly wheezes, and Arthur can’t help but look at it. He’s seen it before, in strange dreams on the cusp of his fevers. It’s a massive coyote, tangled and matted and as black as pitch, fur as gnarled as a thicket of thorns. Its jaws drip with something that looks an awful lot like crude oil, and Arthur swears it’s grinning at him, regarding him with shiny black eyes. _I want to tell him,_ it says in a voice like the sharp crack of splitting ice, the rumble of an avalanche, the shrieking and moaning of bending metal. The thing is made of destruction, and Arthur can’t bring himself to look away. _Let me tell him. Let me tell him._  
  
The stag doesn’t turn. Its milky eyes are passive and calm. _Silence,_ it says. _You did not rule his heart._  
  
_But I was there,_ snarls the coyote. _I’ve always been there._  
  
They seem to have a silent standoff, and Arthur almost feels like he’s intruding. Then, he watches the stag dip its head, and the sun sets with it. _Very well,_ it concedes. _But only this once._  
  
The coyote yips and laughs in victory, and suddenly, the moon is in its jaws. Arthur doesn’t know how, but that’s the sort of nature of a dream, he thinks. It carries the moon like a dog carrying a ball, eager to play. The snow is suddenly cast in silver moonlight, shining from the coyote’s mouth, and the stars return to the sky, gazing down like an invested audience.  
  
_You have made your choices,_ gurgles the coyote. _And these are the things to come._  
  
Arthur sees things in the way of a daydream. He sees them happening before him, as clear and plain as a magic lantern show, while also still seeing the stag and coyote before him. In this strange sight, he sees John, Abigail, and Jack on a farm, as content and perfect as a family drawn on a postcard. He sees Uncle beside them, and Charles, and Sadie. There are others, just shadows of people that Arthur doesn’t know. There is some sadness, of course, but—  
  
Gunfire. The faces of men he knew like Bill, Javier, and Dutch. He sees madness in their eyes, agony, sorrow, fury. Blood blossoms on shirts and pools on coats and in pocks in dirt streets. There is gunsmoke and the stench of powder acrid in the air. And Marston at the center of it all.  
  
Marston, dead.  
  
Abigail follows.  
  
Jack, older now, the spitting image of his father, but with an emptiness to his eyes that John never had. Arthur hears the gunshots, and he sees a cold glare on Jack’s face.  
  
The coyote laughs, and the vision is gone. _One of many,_ it cackles. _Suffering follows all of you. You cannot dispel it. It’s meant for you._  
  
The wind picks up again, carrying Arthur’s voice through the pass. “So, it didn’t matter what I did?” he asks. “They’re all gonna die in the end?”  
  
_All must die,_ the coyote reminds him.  
  
“But, like _that_. What you just showed me. I tried to save them an’ that’s just gonna be the result.”  
  
Before the coyote can speak again, the stag makes a guttering sound through its nose and raises its head again, carrying the sun with it. _Are you content with this coming to pass? They will have some good years, of course._  
  
_But it will all end the same way,_ adds the coyote with far too much joy in its crackling forest fire of a voice.  
  
For the first time since his death, Arthur feels angry. It’s a strange sensation, feeling anger without a pulse keeping time in his chest or the heat of it coursing through him. It feels like a storm shrieking at the boards of a house, trying to tear through it. It’s this raw, unfettered thing, and denim-blue clouds suitably gather on the mountain peaks, much to the delight of the coyote.  
  
“No, I ain’t _content,_ ” he says to the stag. “Why’d you all show me that if it’s somethin’ I can’t change? If all they’re gonna get is suffering, then that’s a waste of my goddamn time.”  
  
To his surprise, the stag and coyote stare at him with the same amount of passiveness. Even the blue jay holds still on its perch.  
  
Then, the stag says, _You asked if there was an alternative, Arthur Morgan._  
  
He looks between the two of them, between the sun-crowned antlers and the moon held in oozing black jaws. “Is there?” he asks them.  
  
The coyote asks, _Would you accept it if we told you there was?_  
  
“Suppose that depends on what it _is._ ”  
  
_A chance to change things,_ answers the stag. Arthur watches its nostrils flare with steam. _To change them how you see fit._  
  
He regards them, and thinks. He has a feeling they won’t tell him the exact details of this _deal_ of theirs, if that’s the correct word at all. And if he pushes, they won’t answer, because that’s just the nature of the dream. “There’s a catch,” he says instead.  
  
_Always,_ agrees the coyote.  
  
“And I have a feelin’ you won’t tell me.”  
  
_It isn’t for us to say,_ says the stag. _But I remind you that your choices are clear. You may choose this, the alternative, or you can choose the rest you deserve. Their lives will go on, and they will end as is the fate of all those who draw breath. They will join you in time._  
  
_They’ll suffer,_ adds the coyote with the cracking voice of a falling tree.  
  
_But in the great stretch of time, you will hardly notice,_ the stag counters.  
  
The answer is on the wind before Arthur opens his mouth at all.  
  
_Very well,_ says the stag.  
  
_If that’s what you want,_ says the coyote.  
  
And then they’re off running. The sun chases the moon, the moon chases the sun, and suddenly, the sky flickers with the colors of sunrise, daylight, sunset, night, in hundreds of revolutions that leave Arthur dazed and dizzy. Gold, violet, orange, red, blue, silver—  
  
Black.  
  
It all goes black.

☾☼☽

He wakes up to the smell of burnt coffee, and the sound of pine sap popping in a fire. Not too far away, he can hear a horse quietly whickering, and then someone shushes it. A fly buzzes by his head, its wings whining near his ear, and he half-heartedly swats at it before grunting and hiding his face in his pillow. It only vaguely begins to strike him that his head is on a pillow at all, rather than a stone or a patch of packed dirt.  
  
Then he hears someone say, “‘Bout time you woke up.”  
  
If he didn’t know any better, he would think it was Abigail’s voice. He _does_ know better, however, and is in the full belief that Abigail’s somewhere safe with John and Jack.  
  
He feels someone shove at his shoulder, and his only response is another grunt before he tries in vain to roll away from it.  
  
“Oh, come _on_. You can’t stay in bed forever. Two days is a little _too_ much if you ask me.”  
  
Two days—  
  
_What?_  
  
Arthur opens his eyes and is faced with a board of weathered wood. His eyes track upwards to a horseshoe nailed to the surface, and the familiar photograph of one Lyle Morgan, arrested for larceny.  
  
He almost knocks himself out on the board as he sits up, just narrowly missing a jutting section of chipped wood. His chest is heaving with breath; perfectly clear, unhindered breath. Slowly, he turns to look at the impossible-but-sounds-like-Abigail, only to find that it is, in fact, Miss Abigail Roberts, watching him with wide, worried eyes. After a strained pause where the two of them don’t seem to know what to do about each other, her hands suddenly take flight like a pair of startled birds, hovering around his head.  
  
“Oh, Jesus,” she says. “Don’t hit it again!”  
  
“ _What?_ ” he finally asks, voicing the only question he really has. His voice sounds cracked, parched. His throat hurts, but not even a fraction as badly as it did in the worst throes of the disease.  
  
But Abigail’s too busy fretting over his head to notice the fact that she shouldn’t _be_ there, and he shouldn’t be alive, and they shouldn’t be at—  
  
Arthur’s going to pass out again. He’s going to fall completely unconscious and allow his body and mind to play catch up with each other so they can collectively come to terms with the fact that he should be very, _very_ dead. Because otherwise, one of those entities has gone completely rogue and is insisting that they’re at Horseshoe Overlook, with a full Van der Linde Gang camp, complete with tents for people who aren’t even alive anymore.  
  
“Abigail,” he croaks, suddenly feeling faint. His vision swims, and he only just registers Abigail’s hands on his shoulders, gently guiding him to lay back down.  
  
“Alright, maybe I spoke too soon,” she admits, even putting her hand at the back of his head so he doesn’t incur more trauma by shattering his skull on a soft pillow. “I’m gonna get Grimshaw to have a look at you. She kept sayin’ we should take you into Valentine, but no one was havin’ it.”  
  
“ _Abigail,_ ” he repeats, more insistently this time. He can’t really deal with the fact that she’s invoking the late Susan Grimshaw, especially when her corpse is as clear of an image as a photograph in his head.  
  
She finally pauses, one hand resting on the crown of his head.  
  
“Water?” he asks.  
  
“Oh! Of course!” She’s suddenly a flurry of apologetic activity, hurrying over to Pearson’s wagon (who shouldn’t be there at all).  
  
It leaves Arthur to lay in stunned silence on a bed that isn’t really his. There’s no gang, and no _him_ , so there should be no reason that he’s there at all. His mind isn’t getting past that first barrier of impossibility, so it’s in no danger of much higher thought, even as the oddly lively ghost of Susan Grimshaw passes by his tent, pauses, and gives him a sardonic grin.  
  
“Was startin’ to think—” she starts, only to be interrupted by Abigail skirting around her with a tin cup full of water. Abigail helps him sit up, and Grimshaw rolls her eyes before coming over to help her with the process. “Was startin’ to think that you weren’t gonna wake up,” she finishes as Abigail presses the lip of the cup against his mouth.  
  
The water is gloriously cool, and Arthur has to steady and control himself so that he doesn’t drink the whole thing in one go. He hears Abigail quietly tell him to pace himself. Grimshaw follows it up with, “Hell, let him choke! That’s what he gets for makin’ us fret like that.”  
  
He sips at it, and Abigail takes it away to his begrudging understanding.  
  
Once he gets his breath back and can slide his voice over his vocal cords without wincing, he looks up at the two of them. Both of their expressions are mixed, like they aren’t quite sure how to react to him and they’re waiting on him to make the first move. Grimshaw’s decidedly more guarded, and Abigail looks like she has something to say but she isn’t sure how to say it.  
  
Finally, Arthur asks, “What the hell happened?”  
  
Grimshaw sighs and crosses her arms over her chest. “Of course he don’t remember. Knocked his senses right out of his damn ears.”  
  
“You fell off your horse,” Abigail answers. “Or, it seemed more like you hit somethin’ and fell. Either way, Charles thinks you was layin’ there for at least a day before he found you.”  
  
“Brought you back lookin’ like you got robbed right outta your grave,” Grimshaw adds.  
  
Arthur isn’t sure how to take that, if the vision of the stag and the coyote was a dream or was reality or _what_ ; if _everything_ was a dream. Hell, he isn’t entirely sure that what he’s experiencing right now isn’t just another dream layered on top of everything else. For that matter, the past few months felt real as well. He can distinctly remember the burning of the disease eating him from the inside out, and the agony of watching friend after friend die off like cattle in a particularly bad winter. And he can remember Dutch’s face with horrifying clarity, combined with the realization that Dutch wasn’t the man Arthur thought he was, and that he was perfectly willing to leave John and Arthur to the proverbial wolves.  
  
That Dutch was as real as the ladies in front of him are. The longer they stay in Arthur’s vision, the more the past seems to get fuzzy and indistinct.  
  
“Oh,” is all he says. That’s all he feels like he can say.

“ _Oh,_ he says,” Grimshaw tuts, throwing her hands into the air before turning around and heading back towards Pearson’s wagon.  
  
She leaves him and Abigail in awkward silence, and Abigail makes a few false starts before holding her hands in front of her, fidgeting with her own fingers. Arthur can’t remember the last time he’s seen her like this.  
  
“About what I said,” she finally says. “If you need more rest— I was only kidding, is all.”  
  
He sinks back on his pillow, shifting his gaze from her to the canvas above him, lit gray in the morning light. Then, he clears his throat. “I’m alright,” he says. “Can I ask you somethin’, though?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“Who do we got at camp right now?”  
  
There’s a thoughtful pause. “Uh, got all the girls, and Mrs. Adler. Pearson, Strauss, Mr. Escuella, Mr. Smith, Mr. Williamson, an’ of course Uncle, ‘cause he ain’t goin’ anywhere. Me, John, an’ Jack. Hosea an’ Dutch. Oh, and that O’Driscoll fella tied to the tree! He’s still about.”  
  
What was initially just a low, humming thing now starts to surface as honest to goodness shock. The fact that Kieran’s alive—  
  
_He was carrying his head in his damn hands like a ghost from an old story. They mangled him, turned him into a goddamn nightmare because they’re animals—_  
  
Arthur hears himself breathe harder, and he has to squeeze his eyes shut when something like panic starts to overtake him.  
  
“Who’re... Uh, who’re we missin’?” he asks.  
  
“Lenny and Micah ain’t back yet. Neither is Reverend Swanson.”  
  
He keeps his eyes shut, trying to see past the vision of Lenny’s body on a Saint Denis roof. And Micah.  
  
He doesn’t want to think about Micah at all.  
  
“Arthur, are you alright?” Abigail asks. “I mean, aside from the obvious. We can still get someone to take you into Valentine.”  
  
Arthur has to bite back all the words that are threatening to come up like a geyser with enough pressure. He shouldn’t be alive, she shouldn’t be here, more than half their camp should be gone, and _none_ of this should be happening.  
  
Instead, he says, “I’m fine. Just give me another hour or so.”  
  
She doesn’t look relieved when he opens his eyes, but she looks resigned. “Alright, but holler if you need somethin’,” she says.  
  
“Sure.”  
  
She leaves him alone, and Arthur lays there, confused, baffled, and honestly, goddamn _terrified._ His heart is running a race in his chest, battering against his ribs like a prisoner, shouting out, _I shouldn’t be here!_ It shouldn’t, because Arthur knows he died on that mountain, and he has no idea how to explain that to anyone, let alone a whole camp full of people that—  
  
Well, he can’t dwell on that much more if he wants to try to keep his wits about him.  
  
What he can do is take up Abigail’s offer and rest. He shuts his eyes, focuses on his unhindered breathing, the rampant stutter of his heart, the rush of blood in his ears, and the sounds of the camp around him. Maybe when he wakes up, things might start making sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr](http://radiojamming.tumblr.com)


	2. The Second Death of Arthur Morgan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you guys SO much for all the wonderful feedback. i'm kind of in awe at it and i've tried my best to respond to all of the sweet comments, so thank you, THANK YOU. <333
> 
> i kind of wrestled with this chapter a bit, and i'm still not 100% satisfied but i was driving myself up a wall staring at it. either way, it more or less shows that resurrection vertigo is a serious issue, and we get some plot kickoff! hopefully, things will speed up a little bit after this and we can get well underway in watching Arthur Morgan Tries to Perform Groundhog Day. aaaaand warnings in this chapter for vomiting (a few times) and some gore. also this chapter probs shows how much i loved kieran. what a boi. <3
> 
> (and pairings are still getting poked and prodded! charles/arthur seems to be the favorite so far, but i'm also digging the idea of arthur getting loved on from multiple sources, like he deserves. i'm super partial to charles tho. ;w;)

Arthur wakes up to the muted sound of a conversation, and to a headache right on par with his worst hangover. He has a hard time opening his eyes, and reaches up to rub away the accumulation of god-only-knows that’s built up a seal on his eyelids. When he finally looks around, he has no idea what time of day it is; if he’s slept through the night and woken to a gray morning, or if it’s late in a cloudy afternoon. It’s disorienting, and along with his headache, his thoughts slowly start to recollect and pulse through his head.  
  
_Not. Dead. Not. Dead._  
  
“Jesus,” he mumbles, running his hand down his face as he tries to get his bearings back.  
  
The conversation keeps going on, and as his head gets a little clearer, he starts to pick up on the sounds of Tilly and Karen’s voices.  
  
“We’re gonna have to do this forever,” Karen says. “You ever notice Grimshaw ain’t over here with us when we do this? She’s always walkin’ around like the grand dame of the camp.”  
  
He hears Tilly stifle a laugh, and Arthur, through his mental fog, can imagine Karen puffing herself up like a pheasant, mimicking Grimshaw. “That’s just how it is,” Tilly replies, but Arthur can hear the smile in her voice. Then, he hears her hiss, followed by an, “Ow! Damn!”  
  
“Watch it. Needles are sharp, in case you didn’t notice.”  
  
“Shush, you.”  
  
The two of them start giggling again, and something deep in Arthur’s chest feels just a hair lighter at the sound of it. He had almost forgotten what laughter sounded like in camp, and if he wasn’t questioning the whole state of reality, he thinks he’d enjoy it more.  
  
He makes an attempt to sit up, steadying himself through the vertigo that rolls up from his toes to his head in a wave. Nausea follows it, so that he sits there, trying to tamp down the urge to vomit everywhere. For a recent resurrection, he doesn’t think coloring the grass beside his bed would be a good start. Arthur cringes and rests one arm over his midsection like the weight will help, and then waits for it to ebb.  
  
At that moment, Mary Beth comes around the corner of his wagon, carrying a pile of clean and folded linens. She turns her head, face calmly neutral until she sees him, and then nearly drops the linens right back into the mud. “Arthur!” she exclaims, holding the linens close to her chest. “Oh my lord, you’re awake!”  
  
He smiles, or rather cringes _and_ smiles, which probably only serves to make it look like he’s gritting his teeth through an amputation. “Mary Beth,” he manages. That’s about the best he can do without throwing up everywhere and making even more of a fool of himself.  
  
“Are you alright? Do you need anything? I can go get—”  
  
He shakes his head, but the look on his face must be more awful than he thinks, because she gives him a strange, harried look before hustling back the way she came.  
  
Of course, at that moment, his vision takes on the quality of opening his eyes underwater, and the whole camp swims and floats in front of him.  
  
— _grasping the fountain pen in her hands like he’s just handed her a holy relic. She smiles at him, and he swears that there are tears forming in her eyes. He thinks she’ll make something of that talent of hers someday—_  
  
“Shit,” he grinds through his teeth, just seconds before a tin bucket seems to magically appear in his lap. He has about a half second to be grateful its conjuring before he’s emptying every last speck of solid matter in his stomach into it. He heaves, makes some extremely awful noises, and just manages to register a hand on his back, rubbing wide circles through his sweat-soaked shirt.  
  
“You know, I had mornin’ sickness that sounded just like that,” he hears Abigail say. “I mean it. Even thought to myself, ‘Damn, I sound like Arthur Morgan the mornin’ after a bender!’”  
  
Arthur lifts his face up out of the bucket to see her beside him, and poor Mary Beth just behind her, watching Arthur like he’s liable to drop dead in a bucket of his own misery. Abigail, bless her, just stands there with the perfect air of someone who has in fact seen it all; mostly because she _has_.  
  
“Thanks, Abigail,” he rasps.  
  
“Can’t tell if you’re thankin’ me for the bucket or the compliment.”  
  
“Both.”  
  
“Well, you’re welcome on both counts,” she says, patting him on the shoulder. “Of course, Grimshaw’s gonna have a kitten if she finds out you painted the inside of one of her buckets, but necessity n’ all.”  
  
Two things happen at that moment. Mary Beth lets out a horrified gasp at realizing that he’s been using one of the washing buckets, and Arthur just adds to the horror by going for a second round of violent retching. If he’s really come back to life, this is certainly not the way he wanted to go about it.  
  
A thought, disjointed and hazy, rolls into his head right as the nausea begins to ease off. He raises his head up again, probably looking as pathetic as a street beggar, and flings his left hand out, aimlessly gesturing towards Abigail. “Jour— _Journal_ ,” he says, right before he gags back into the bucket. Mary Beth makes a helpless sound in the back of her throat, and he looks up to see Abigail dismiss her with a nod of the head. Then, Abigail turns her attention back to him.  
  
“Sorry?”  
  
“M’journal, Abigail,” he says. Or, rather, _tries_ to say.  
  
She raises an eyebrow, but reaches for his satchel, tucked in between the bed and his end table. “Thought you don’t like no one touchin’ it,” she jokes, reaching into the bag and handing it to him. “You gonna write about this?”  
  
He manages a smile, and probably looks even more pathetic, hanging over the bucket with his arms wrapped around it, holding up the journal at the far end. The thought that struck him was that his journal is his best bet on figuring out what the hell is happening around him. Ever since he took it up as a hobby, between scribbling down notes, sketching all manner of things, and keeping something like a detailed record of his life, he’s come to rely on the thing. It seems like a lifetime ago, to think of the journal before this one that went up like kindling in the fire. He remembers being disheartened, but not totally steered off the idea. And although his recollections are as hazy as a bayou at dawn, he knows for a fact that he really doubled down on it after Blackwater.  
  
He opens the journal, paging through the first few pages. He sees the street layout he drew, the sketch of Blackwater’s main thoroughfare, the portrait of Jenny.  
  
The big black X going through the plan diagram. At least he knows that plan was jacked all to hell even now. That’s stayed consistent.  
  
He reads about the camp at Colter, about Sadie— _Mrs. Adler_ , since they’re not familiar yet—and the O’Driscolls, and her farm being burned to the ground. There’s the standoff at the mining camp, a few sketches of the trail and some plants and animals, and the first few sketches of Horseshoe Overlook. According to the journal, he’s been to Valentine, scuffled with Tommy, bought a new horse, went hunting with Hosea—  
  
And that’s it.  
  
Arthur flips through the rest of the journal, finding blank page after blank page. Where there should be sketches, portraits, and entries, there’s _nothing_. He goes back through three more times, as if some magic act is about to be performed at his fingertips and he’s going to summon back months’ worth of living.  
  
He hears Abigail move over his shoulder, and when she speaks, her voice sounds amused but strained. “You, uh, lookin’ for somethin’ in particular?”  
  
He doesn’t say anything. There’s not a whole lot to say in the first place that would make so much as a dust mote’s bit of sense to her.  
  
Instead, he shakes his head, and then lowers it into the bucket.  
  
He feels Abigail gingerly take the journal out of his hands, setting it down on the bed in between his feet. Then, she pats him on the back again. “You sure you don’t wanna go see the doctor?” she asks. “You ain’t lookin’ so good. Miss Grimshaw thought you might be concussed.”  
  
“No,” he grumbles, more to the bucket than her.  
  
There might be something to say about new lows here, about Abigail attempting to comfort him while he has his head halfway into a bucket of his own vomit, wondering if he’s just hallucinated several entire months. But if his memory is to be believed, he’s had lower lows than this, and really, he should be considering this as a good thing. People are alive and relatively happy, and for the most part, everyone is together. Even Kieran—  
  
Suddenly, he realizes that he needs to get Kieran off that tree. It hits him with a strange amount of urgency, like a single clear light in a fog.  
  
Arthur’s head snaps up, which causes a third wave of nausea to ram into him like his stomach is in its swan song. He lurches, considers the bucket for a second more, and then decides that bringing up bile is just going to have to wait. Almost drunkenly, he tries to get off the bed, which ends in him nearly upturning the bucket onto the cot before Abigail expertly snatches it, carefully setting it down on the ground a good four feet away from his sprawling limbs and loss of balance. “Damnit, Arthur!” she exclaims as she wedges up against him to keep him from rolling off the bed. “What the hell’s gotten into you?”  
  
He feels like that etching of an octopus from one of his zoology books, with arms and legs going every which way and the sense that he isn’t controlling any of them. He sort of shamble-stumbles to his feet, which is probably hilarious to watch for everyone except Abigail. “I gotta—” he starts, and then gags when his nausea kindly reminds him that even though he’s trying to ignore it, it’s still there.  
  
“Lie back down, you stubborn bastard!”  
  
By this time, they’ve gotten the attention of everyone remaining at camp. Arthur doesn’t have the mental wherewithal to do a headcount, and for that matter, his relationship with reality isn’t the best at the moment. Regardless, it’s got to be one hell of a sight, with Abigail trying to wrangle him like a mustang, and him playing the part more like a mustang with a closed head injury.  
  
“What are you doing?” he hears Dutch call from his tent. And, hell, Arthur _really_ doesn’t want to see Dutch right now. Images of the last... _whatever_ it was are relatively clear in his head, with Dutch gazing down at him with that sadly passive expression. He can still see Dutch turn away, and the sick feeling he felt then just seems to double at hearing the man’s voice again.  
  
Which must be interesting for Dutch, considering all he sees is Arthur sway past him, retching, with Abigail helplessly trying to grab him while calling for John to, “Help me get this fool back in bed before he does somethin’ _real_ stupid!”  
  
He vaguely hears John respond with something that sounds like, “What’s goin’ on?”  
  
Arthur wants to see John only slightly more than he wants to see Dutch, seeing as how their last meeting wasn’t the happiest.  
  
Apparently, they’re far enough along that John’s recovered most of his strength, because before Arthur can clear Pearson’s wagon, he feels arms lock around his midsection, and suddenly he’s being hoisted up and backwards like John means to wrestle him. “God _damnit_ , Marston!” he shouts, and he’s oddly proud that he doesn’t retch again. “Let me go!”  
  
He throws his elbow back a few times, hoping to get a couple of good hits in on John. Unfortunately, Arthur’s coordination really has gone to shit, and he ends up elbowing air while John still has him gripped.  
  
“Morgan! Calm down!”  
  
John’s voice has more of an effect on Arthur than he anticipates, because it feels like all the fight’s drained right out of him, along with his stomach contents and his pride. It isn’t that Arthur’s abandoned his intent, but there’s something about hearing John so close to him, after the last round ended so badly and Arthur’s only intent was to get John and his family out safely. His head is too scrambled to make much more sense out of it, since it’s starting to feel like it did with Mary Beth.  
  
_—looking at him, proud of him, thinking that if anyone can make it out of this mess, it’s him. He wants John to do well, to do better than this, to do right by Abigail and Jack. It hurts, watching John’s face go through the motions of grief, knowing that John’s already figured out what’s going to happen. He doesn’t want to look away, because looking away means it’s over—  
  
_Arthur’s only slightly aware that he’s gone limp in John’s arms. That wouldn’t be a problem if John was fully back to health, but apparently it’s too much on too little strength, and the two of them topple over just short of the poker table. On the even less bright side, John doesn’t have enough meat on his bones to even make for a good cushion for Arthur to land on. He only just registers the sound of something crunching under his elbow, and John letting out an unflattering yelp.  
  
On the brighter side, Arthur feels his consciousness start to fade back out before he has to deal with the immediate repercussions.

☾☼☽

“Don’t matter,” is the first thing Arthur hears. It’s Hosea’s voice, quiet enough that Arthur can barely make it out above the crackle of a nearby fire. “I just don’t think you want anyone makin’ house calls out here.”  
  
He hears Dutch laugh, but it’s that low, almost humorless kind. “No, I can’t say I do.”  
  
“Well, it ain’t so far to Valentine. I can take him in the morning.”  
  
Arthur can hear the gentle ringing of spurs, and then he hears Dutch laugh, far more authentically. “Might wanna take this sad sack with you, Hosea.”  
  
“Aw, hush it, Dutch,” John says. He sounds like he has a cold, all stuffed up with his voice lower and rougher than usual.  
  
“How’s the nose?” Hosea asks, and Arthur can hear the smile in his voice.  
  
“Not broken,” John replies, but it sounds like ‘dot brokehd’. He sniffs hard, and then lets out a quiet, ‘ow’.  
  
“Well, we’re takin’ him into Valentine when the sun’s up. I can grab some laudanum while we’re out if you’re feelin’ really sore.”  
  
It sounds like a joke, and John scoffs. “Ain’t that bad. Just get his head screwed on straight this time.”  
  
They’re all silent for a long moment, so all Arthur hears is the gentle creaking of crickets in the woods, the snapping and crackling of the fire, and the high yip of coyotes in the distance. Someone nearby draws a particularly deep snore.  
  
“You think something’s really wrong with him?” John asks, his voice so hushed that Arthur just barely catches the words.  
  
“Well, I can’t say I remember the last time he acted like that and wasn’t completely three sheets to the wind,” Hosea replies thoughtfully. “But I think he’ll recover. Charles said he just hit his head damn hard, but we all know the boy’s made of sturdier stuff than that.”  
  
John seems to accept this. He sniffs again, and then curses. “Just let him know that when he’s back on his feet, I’m allowed to get one good hit in.”  
  
“Oh, come now. It wasn’t on purpose,” Dutch says. It’s the most good-natured he’s sounded since—  
  
Arthur really, _really_ doesn’t want to think about it. His head hurts enough as it is.  
  
He opens his eyes a crack, facing the boards of the wagon and watching the flickering firelight cast shuddering shadows on the photographs and the horseshoe. His eyes rest on the photograph of him, Hosea, and Dutch, younger and fresh-faced. His own expression is a little bit cocky, and definitely playing at being a lot more serious than he actually was. He looks at Dutch’s hand on his shoulder, at their little triad that’s been Arthur’s family for most of his life.  
  
That still _is_ his family. Because Dutch is still here, relatively stable. Hosea isn’t dead. _Arthur_ isn’t dead.  
  
As his eyes slide shut, and he hears the voices of this family lower to a dull murmur, as familiar and calming as they’ve ever been. How many times has he fallen asleep to Hosea and Dutch quietly conversing in the corner of some cabin they’ve appropriated? How many times has he felt completely safe, knowing that they’re there? And there, at the end, how many times did he think that he was never going to have that again?  
  
Except now, he does. They’re right there, along with everyone else he thought he had lost. He’s too exhausted and sore to think too philosophically about second chances and dreams and all that. That’s for another time, which, by God, he _has._  
  
_Tomorrow,_ he thinks. _Tomorrow, I’m gonna start fixing things._

☾☼☽

He wakes up with the sunrise, feeling far better than he did when he knocked John over. The earliest of early birds are already hard at work trying to wake their fellow forest creatures, and the sky is still deep ink blue, with just a sliver of gold on the eastern horizon.  
  
It’s that kind of cold that comes just before dawn, when the earth isn’t quite ready to shake off the night, and Arthur sees his breath form in clouds in front of his face. He takes a second to just breathe, to feel the cold air slide in and out of his lungs, unhindered and unchallenged.  
  
It feels _damn_ good.  
  
Sitting up is easier, and the only nausea he feels is the kind that comes with an empty stomach. His head doesn’t feel like it’s going to come loose and roll away from him, which might be the biggest improvement. He can also stand up without help, and the world doesn’t rock like a ship caught in a storm.  
  
“Alright,” he says to himself, just to hear his own voice. It doesn’t sound like he’s been coughing himself bloody.  
  
He goes through the motions of getting dressed as quietly as he can, while starting to formulate the beginnings of a plan. As he shoulders on his favorite gray scout jacket, he thinks he has a good start. Getting Kieran off the tree is the first thing, because after all Kieran went through during the last round, and that damn image of his corpse that Arthur can’t shake no matter how blurry the past is getting, he can’t stand the thought of leaving the poor kid tied up there one more minute. He knows Kieran will tell the truth, that he’s eager to, and that the results won’t be bad so long as they keep him out of O’Driscoll claws. After that’s done, he can start working at reassembling everyone else. Sean comes to mind next, if only for the vision of a fine mist of blood coming out of the back of his head, and his body dropping like a sand bag.  
  
If things work the way they did before, Lenny should come back on his own. And Micah—  
  
Well, he’ll deal with Micah when that particular problem arises, among others that just seem inevitable.  
  
For now, Kieran’s at the top of the list since he’s the closest available. At first, Arthur debates on preventing things at Six Point Cabin, because Colm wasn’t there the first time, and the massacre they kicked off only served to piss the man off more. Chafing against the O’Driscolls isn’t going to keep Kieran out of their hands, or to prevent the blood feud from getting bloodier still. However, Arthur remembers the money tucked away, and the shotgun. And he remembers that Six Point Cabin is what solidified Kieran’s place with the Van der Lindes, allowing him to earn their trust. He also remembers that the fight knocks some of the O’Driscolls out of the picture for a while, giving them some breathing room.  
  
No matter how he tries to tackle it, it seems like going through Six Point Cabin is the only thing he can do in order to keep Kieran in place. The money doesn’t hurt, either. This is, of course, considering that the last life wasn’t just a big dream that he’s still trying to shake off.  
  
(To say nothing of the gold bar that he hopes is still just down the hill in Limpany, but he’ll get there when he gets there.)  
  
He finishes up by putting his hat on, and then starts his way over to Kieran in a walk that’s massively improved over his last concussed attempt. He tries to do it quietly, but he hasn’t discounted the scouts that are on watch at this hour.  
  
“Headed somewhere?”  
  
Charles’ voice is whisper-quiet, but it still manages to make Arthur jump more than he cares to admit. Charles comes out of the shadows of the tree nearest to the hitching posts, his rifle resting on his shoulder, the collar of his coat up to his ears. The dim light makes it difficult to see his exact expression, but Arthur gets the impression that he’s smiling at him.  
  
“Damnit, Charles, don’t _do_ that,” Arthur hisses.  
  
“I’m the one on watch, and you’re supposed to be in bed,” Charles reminds him.  
  
“I thought you n’ Javier were supposed to be out looking for Sean.”  
  
Charles shrugs. “We’re heading out this afternoon. Was gonna head out earlier, but I had to scrape you off the ground first, so you put a dent in the schedule.”  
  
“Sorry for the inconvenience,” Arthur dryly replies, crossing his arms over his chest. “Thank you, though.”  
  
“Better to make sure you didn’t die first,” Charles says, and he’s definitely smiling now. “Although from the look of things yesterday, you came awfully close.”  
  
Arthur cringes, and his head reminds him of how stupid all of that was with an ungentle throb. “Yeah, well,” he says, and leaves it at that.  
  
“I assume you’re gonna tell me you feel good enough to do whatever it is you’re doing.”  
  
“What if I said I was only getting breakfast?”  
  
Charles just barely suppresses a laugh. “You’d be lying.”  
  
“Well, I ain’t lyin’. Not completely anyway,” Arthur says with a grin. “I’m starvin’.”  
  
“I’m sure you are after what you did to Miss Grimshaw’s bucket. She ain’t happy, by the way.”  
  
“Is she ever?”  
  
Charles _does_ laugh this time and shakes his head, adjusting the rifle on his shoulder. “Alright, _aside_ from breakfast. You’re supposed to be resting, _and_ I heard Hosea say he was planning on hauling you to the doctor in Valentine today.”  
  
“I’m fine,” Arthur replies, lowering his hands to shove into the pockets of his coat. “Anyway, I couldn’t spend one more second in that bed. I just need to get some chow in me and I’ll be good to go. No doctor needed.”  
  
“Of course,” Charles says. It might be the early dawn light, but Arthur swears the man’s eyes have a little extra shine to them. “Undo all my hard work, why don’t you.”  
  
“I said thank you!”  
  
“Mhmm.” Charles gives him a light, friendly shove to the arm before concluding with, “Don’t do anything stupid. I mean _really_ stupid. Alright? I don’t want to have to go back out there and haul your carcass back here. I do enough of that already.”  
  
“I’ll be fine, Charles. You don’t gotta worry about me.”  
  
“Then stop giving me reasons to,” Charles replies, and it’s hard to miss the fondness in his voice. Honestly, it’s one of the things Arthur’s missed the most about him, especially when he was in a place where he didn’t know who to turn to. Charles has been one of the most consistently good people he’s ever known, and one of fewer still that he’d trust unconditionally. At this point in time, if everything is to be believed, their friendship is still in its early stages, but Arthur has a good idea of how it’ll play out.  
  
“Alright,” Arthur replies as Charles goes back on watch. “Be safe on your way to Blackwater, an’ try to bring back that idiot in one piece!”  
  
“You’re always welcome to help, you know,” Charles calls back, a smile in his voice.  
  
Arthur can’t help but smile back. He’ll be out there with them, of course. Rescuing Sean is something he remembers clearly. Keeping Sean alive, however, is going to be another ordeal entirely.  
  
With no one else on watch to scold him for being a moron and being out of bed, Arthur finishes the rest of his walk to Kieran, who is currently more or less a human-shaped lump tied to the bottom of the tree. The poor kid is soaked with dew and shivering, even in his sleep. When Arthur nudges him in the shoulder, he actually yelps like he’s been struck, and he stands up so abruptly that Arthur worries about him dislocating his shoulder before they even do anything.  
  
“Wh— M-Mister Arthur!” Kieran exclaims, wide eyed in the dark. He’s way too loud, so Arthur futilely waves a hand in front of his face like the movement alone will shut him up.  
  
“Hey, pipe down!” Arthur whispers at him. “You wanna wake the whole camp up?”  
  
Kieran stares at him and shakes his head. “N-no. What are you doin’? What are you gonna do to me?”  
  
The image of Bill trying to castrate Kieran with a pair of red-hot tongs is one that Arthur’s probably going to have a hard time shaking off for the rest of his days. “I need you to talk,” Arthur says, trying to sound menacing and calm at the same time, which doesn’t really work as well as it does on someone like Dutch. If anything, he sounds like he’s constipated. “You wanna get off that tree, don’t you?”  
  
Kieran nods rapidly.  
  
“And you know _how_.”  
  
If it’s possible, more color drains out of Kieran’s face, and he rivals the moon in how blanched he looks. “I— I _can’t_ , mister. I already told you fellas everything!”  
  
He hasn’t told them about Six Point Cabin yet, and technically, he wouldn’t have to. Arthur knows where it is, and what’s there as well as what isn’t. Arthur could tell Dutch about it and say that he learned it from another O’Driscoll or from his travels or something of the like, but that doesn’t get Kieran any closer to freedom. Unfortunately, Arthur realizes, Kieran has to say it, no matter what.  
  
“ _Boy,_ ” Arthur grinds out, getting up close to Kieran’s face. “You feel like learnin’ the sort of things we do ‘round here to people who don’t tell the truth?”  
  
“N-no, but I already—”  
  
“Oh, we do _all_ manner of interesting things. You know that big ol’ fella, Bill? Well, he’s _awfully_ fond of a little practice involvin’ that pair of tongs over there and some parts of ya that I don’t think you really want missin’, if you catch my meaning.”  
  
“Oh, God,” Kieran wheezes.  
  
“Yep,” Arthur goes on, keeping his voice low and as mean as he can, “And if you don’t start tellin’ us what we wanna know, I think Mister Bill would be _real_ happy to demonstrate his practice. I could go wake him up right now, but I tell ya, he’s a _real_ bear first thing in the mornin’. Grumpy as it gets, and he’d end up takin’ it out on _you._ ”  
  
Kieran looks like he’s either going to burst into tears or outright faint.  
  
Unfortunately, Kieran’s commotion must have been louder than Arthur thought, judging by the shuffling he hears behind him, followed by Dutch very pointedly saying, “ _Arthur,_ ” in a tone that’s historically been followed up by some expression of disappointment.  
  
Arthur doesn’t miss a beat. “And Mister Dutch here! Why, I have all sorts of stories about the sort of things he’s done to folk like you. Believe me, he don’t limit it just to O’Driscolls, but he’s never met one of you bastards that he didn’t send off screamin’ for mercy.”  
  
There’s only a short pause, filled with the sound of Kieran breathing heavily, before Dutch falls in beside Arthur, going from irritated to suavely cruel gang leader in the matter of seconds, like a quick change act. Of course, that doesn’t stop him from giving Arthur a quick glare, which only brings up memories of the mountain; memories Arthur tells himself he doesn’t have time for. He just nods to Dutch, who turns his stare back to Kieran.  
  
“He ain’t wrong, O’Driscoll,” Dutch says, as low and dangerous as he pleases. Kieran tries to stutter out how he isn’t an O’Driscoll, but Dutch shushes him like he’s a spooked horse. “Now, I know you’re all a nest of lyin’ snakes, and that’s just your nature. But it is _awful_ hard to lie when you’re busy screamin’.”  
  
Arthur doesn’t see Bill until he’s right up there with them, and it shouldn’t surprise him at all. The man sleeps like the dead unless someone’s screaming, and then he’s as alert as a fox.  
  
“What are we up to?” Bill asks, grinning in the darkness.  
  
Then, just like that, history starts repeating itself. Threats, screaming, pants getting yanked down, and those damn tongs that Arthur tried to prevent by getting up early to attempt to talk Kieran into confessing. He sighs when Kieran finally panics and gives the location. At the very least, it feels a hell of a lot better to cut the ropes loose than it did the first time.  
  
Bill goes to wake John (who, understandably, grumbles about it for a solid five minutes and claims a headache), and Dutch sighs, staring out at Kieran walking like a newborn colt over to John’s tent. Arthur pauses for just a moment, knowing that he’s about to get an earful, about how he was meant to stay in bed, to wait until Hosea could haul his sorry self to Valentine.  
  
It doesn’t come.  
  
Instead, all Dutch says is, “We need to talk when you get back. And Arthur, you had _better_ come back.”  
  
Arthur nods, tries to smile, and fails. Everything is too fresh in his head, and part of him wants to ask if Dutch really cares if he comes back or not. But frankly, that sounds like some teenage thing to say, especially when so far, Dutch hasn’t given too many signs that he’s like how he was at the end. So, Arthur squares his shoulders and watches the shadow of John shuffle out of tent.  
  
“Will do, Dutch,” Arthur says, and he makes for the hitching post where Shiloh, as healthy as she’s ever been, is waiting. He reaches her, strokes a hand along her golden flank, and finally does smile. “Good to have you back, girl,” he mutters to her as he mounts the saddle. He strokes along her mane, and then turns her when he sees Brown Jack and Old Boy trot out onto the trail.

☾☼☽

Things go to plan at Six Point Cabin, until they don’t.  
  
It seems to work step for step like it did the last time. Marston and Kieran are on Old Boy, Bill and Brown Jack climb the hills right behind them, and Arthur and Shiloh trot alongside, keeping an eye out for anything unsavory in the early morning light. Kieran shakily gives them the directions, and Arthur watches and listens to him with everything from the past life in mind. He sees that nervousness, the way he looks over his shoulders like at any moment, Colm and his men are going to descend on them like wolves and tear them apart. His fear is a very real, tangible thing, and Arthur wonders how he missed all of that the first time.  
  
They make their way up the ridge, and it’s easy to fall back into their original banter, like Arthur’s just following along in a book that’s already been written. The entire time, though, he minds what he says to Kieran, even though John and Bill don’t have a single qualm about terrifying the kid. The biggest difference in conversation is John holding the not-quite-broken nose over Arthur's head, and using it as leverage against Kieran. "See what he did to my face?" John says, turning to look at Kieran over his shoulder while gesturing to the growing bruise on the bridge of his nose. At Arthur's distance, it looks like John got ink on his face and spent the better part of his morning trying in vain to wash it off.  
  
Kieran makes a low noise of distress. "S-sure."  
  
"If he does that to his friends, can you imagine what he'd do to someone like  _you?_ "  
  
Wisely, Kieran doesn't reply.  
  
Eventually, they reach the clearing as Arthur remembers, and Arthur dismounts and takes his bow from Shiloh’s saddle, pausing only to run his hand over the velvet of her nose. “Good job, girl,” he says, and when her ears turn forward and she bobs her head like she agrees with him, he smiles.  
  
“Morgan, get over here!” Bill calls, impatient.  
  
Again, all of it seems to go along on a script that’s already been put in place. There’s the man pissing on the tree, and his two unhappy friends who are about to earn arrows and knives in their heads and backs. John puts his hand over Kieran’s mouth and holds his revolver to his head, but Arthur signals for John to relax.  
  
“He ain’t gonna scream. Are ya, boy?” he asks Kieran, who eagerly shakes his head.  
  
“I don’t trust ‘im,” John whispers, his voice still dulled and nasally.  
  
“We need all hands, includin’ yours, Marston. Even if your aim is shit.”  
  
John seems to consider this, and then slowly lets Kieran go. Kieran looks grateful, and it’s definitely not just Arthur’s imagination that he seems to shuffle over to Arthur like he’s going to protect him.  
  
“I got the knife in case we need it,” Bill reminds him, and Arthur rolls his eyes.  
  
“Let’s just take care of these fools for now,” he says.  
  
It’s faster this time, at least. Arthur takes the pisser down with an arrow to the back of his neck, causing him to silently slump against the tree and slide down, pants at his knees and all. Then, Arthur and Bill silently make for the other two. An arrow and a knife do the job, and they’re crawling through the underbrush, now in full sight of the camp. He nods for Bill to quietly take the man on the log, while Arthur remembers the other bastard on the rock that surprised him the last time. All in all, they’ve gone through five O’Driscolls so far, and not one alarm is raised.  
  
That is, until one of the tipsy gals at the fire turns at the wrong time, just as Bill is digging through the pockets of the man on the log. There’s a tense, silent second where they stare at each other, and then she’s screaming.  
  
“God damnit!” Bill snarls, fighting to get his gun back out. “I thought they was all drunk!”  
  
“That don’t stop some people!” John shouts back, taking cover behind a wagon while the deluge of bullets start.   
  
At least Arthur’s prior knowledge is good for some things in that he knows what to watch out for. He sees the men coming through the trees, and takes a few of them out with his carbine before they can take cover behind the boulders and logs. His aim is apparently still good, honed enough that he can count a few decent headshots.  
  
“Hot damn!” he hears Kieran shout after he gets another man right between the eyes. Good to know he’s still easily impressed.  
  
It’s like controlled chaos for the next few minutes as they push up through the O’Driscoll defenses. One after another, the remaining gang members go down with surprising efficiency, and Arthur thinks they easily shaved a good five minutes off the last time. John gets the last guy who’s decided that running for the hills is the best tactic. One revolver shot to the back is all it takes, and with a loud ‘ _whuff!_ ’, the man disappears into the high ferns.  
  
“Nice!” Bill shouts, hoisting himself up against one of the bullet hole-riddled wagons. “That oughta take care of them for a little while!”  
  
They go through the process of taking anything of immediate value off the corpses, replenishing bullets and cartridges and the like. Arthur knows that Colm isn’t going to be in the cabin, but the man that Kieran snipes will be. He starts heading towards it, revolver at the ready. With any luck, either he’ll get the bastard first, or the whole event will play out the same way it did the first time, and Arthur will get bowled over just in time for Kieran to make his shot and earn his place.  
  
That’s where things go wrong.  
  
He hears John ask something about the cabin and Colm, but Arthur ignores him as he goes to open the door, revolver leveled at where he thinks the man’s head is going to be. Apparently, this was the wrong thing to do, as the man on the other side of the door shouts something in surprise and all Arthur registers is the sharp crack of the rifle going off. At first, he thinks it might have discharged, until he gets the oddest feeling, not unlike when he was concussed. It feels like the world’s about to come loose like boards under his feet, and all he’ll be able to do is fall.  
  
The man’s looking at him with wide, harried eyes set in a pale, gaunt face. He has a mad grin on his face, which only lasts a second more before a bullet goes right through his forehead. Then, he’s on the ground, and Arthur—  
  
Arthur looks down at his stomach, finding an dark wet patch on his shirt that wasn’t there a moment ago.  
  
He hears Kieran curse behind him, and the high panicked call of, “John!”  
  
It takes Arthur a few more seconds to register what’s happened as he watches that dark patch spread, and his hands seem to move on their own accord to hover over the spot. His fingers brush against it and come back dark red, just as little black spots start to fill his vision. Then, the world really does come loose, and Arthur staggers backwards, falling back and cracking his head off the boards of the porch.  
  
It doesn’t immediately hurt. In fact, Arthur doesn’t feel much of anything, except the vague sense that something’s wrong. His guts try to work around the new hole that’s been punctured through them, though not to much avail. All he gets for that is more blood on his shirt and hands.  
  
Shouts fill the air, and Arthur finds it difficult to understand who’s shouting what. He thinks it’s Bill hollering at Kieran, threatening to gut him like a fucking deer, and saying he’s a traitor. There’s Kieran’s terrified voice, pleading, saying he didn’t _know._ He sounds like he’s close to tears, until he lets out a strangled shout. Arthur tries to turn his head to see what’s going on, but his vision fills with brown and red, and John’s worried face is suddenly over his.  
  
“Oh, fuck, Morgan,” he says, pressing his hand over the wound. He looks just as pale as he did up in the mountains after the wolves had their way with him. The scars on his face show up even redder and uglier, and the bruise on his nose is as stark as a warning.   
  
Arthur tries to say something, but it feels like there’s a wine stopper in his throat, keeping his words from bubbling up.  
  
What he wants to say is that it was an accident, and that Kieran had no idea what was going to happen. It isn’t Kieran’s fault, and they definitely shouldn’t punish him for something that was more or less Arthur’s own stupid mistake.  
  
But all he says of any of that is a dull, wheezing, “ _Ah— Ahh—,_ ” that might be the first part of the word ‘accident’.  
  
“Don’t worry, Arthur,” John says. His face is starting to get blurry, but Arthur can see tears forming in his eyes as he keeps pressure that Arthur can just barely feel. “You’re gonna be okay. We’ll get you into Valentine an’ they’ll take care of ya. Just— Just don’t _go_ , alright?”  
  
Arthur tries to reply, but his jaw isn’t working right. He hears Bill snarl something at Kieran, but Kieran isn’t responding anymore. All he can think is that this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. What they did was supposed to allow them to _save_ Kieran, not get him killed sooner. He wants to apologize, to Kieran for screwing up, and to John for a few things, not limited to almost breaking his nose and then dying right in front of him.  
  
But that’s not going to happen, because Arthur remembers how death feels. It’s warm and cold all at once, and then it’s done.

☾☼☽

He wakes to the smell of coffee, the popping of pine sap, the whickering of horses and the shushing that follows, and the buzzing of a fly near his head. In his head, he can still see Marston’s horrified face, and he can feel the dull ache of a rifle shot to the stomach. His hand rises up to his stomach, resting on it like he expects to find a hole there. All he feels is the cotton fabric of his shirt, and not a single physical ache to be found.  
  
Then he hears Abigail say, “‘Bout time you woke up.”  
  
He lays there, silent, letting the fly land on his forehead. Then, very eloquently, he says, “Shit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr](http://radiojamming.tumblr.com)
> 
> Notes:  
> -Laudanum was used for everything from mildly irritating aches to full blown open wounds. It was a multipurpose painkiller that just so happened to be horribly addicting! Yeehaw!  
> -The modern use of the word 'concussion' has been used since the 17th century.  
> -Arthur Morgan is a good, good person. Just in case you didn't know.  
> -I love you!


	3. Third Time's the Charm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, it's still groundhog day where i live! and never mind how long it took me to post this! :D
> 
> mostly this chapter is here to get my writer's block dislodged and keep the plot a-movin'. so you can definitely expect things to start hauling ass properly now that i'm free of my buuuurden! \o/ thank you guys so much again for your patience and for all your kind words. hopefully i can make something like a posting schedule now that i'm not gnawing on chapter two like a rawhide.

Arthur lays on his cot, staring up at the gray-white canvas—focusing on the lighter spots where rainwater and dew has collected—and wills himself not to think too hard. If he does, he doesn’t know what he’s liable to do; something stupid, inevitably. It’s easier to just let his mind go fuzzy at the edges, focusing on something inane like spots on the tent fabric or the sounds of the camp. And it’s all the better than thinking about how he can still smell gunpowder in some pocket of his senses that hasn’t quite been cleared, or how if he thinks _too_ much, he can hear Kieran screaming and gurgling, Bill swearing, and the broken sound of John begging him not to die.  
  
If he thinks harder still, he can feel the weight of illness hooking onto his ribs again like weights on a scale, and that’s when he knows it’s too much.  
  
Abigail doesn’t seem to notice that Arthur’s making a concerted effort to lose himself in his own head. She hums some unrecognizable tune and he hears her adjust something on the end table before she tuts like a Grimshaw protégée and straightens up in his periphery. “Oh, come _on._ You can’t stay in bed forever. Two days is a little _too_ much if you ask me,” she says.  
  
The same damn phrase, down to the emphases. There’s a weird emotion that crops up somewhere in his chest at the thought, and it’s an odd little hybrid between wanting to laugh and wanting to sob like a child. He decides on laughing quietly, just under his breath.  
  
“Two days, huh?” he says, and at the very least, his voice doesn’t sound like its been dragged up one road and down another.  
  
“Day and a half, I suppose, if we’re wantin’ to be generous,” Abigail replies, and it isn’t his imagination that she sounds relieved. He turns his head to look at her properly, to see her looking back at him with an unreadable expression that she quickly hides behind a quirked smile. “You oughta thank Charles for scraping you out of the dirt like he did. Brought you back before the crows got to you.”  
  
“He still around?”  
  
“For now,” she says. “He n’ Javier meant to head back into West Elizabeth to start lookin’ for Sean, near Blackwater if I heard right. Got delayed lookin’ for you, though, and I can’t say I’m not unhappy about that.”  
  
His attempts to keep his thoughts in order take a hit for their effort, knowing that things are exactly the same. Apparently, something of this shows on his face as he watches a pinch form between Abigail’s brows. Her smile falters.  
  
“You okay, Arthur? I can go get—”  
  
“Nah, ‘m fine,” he replies. Unconsciously, his left hand goes back to his stomach, still somehow sure that he’ll find a bullet wound there, as if it’s the sort of thing that can just get misplaced like a pocket watch or a pen. He clears his throat and says, “Just need a few minutes is all.”  
  
He can see Abigail hesitate, and he can’t blame her. It’s kind of her to be so attentive in the first place, and he remembers (or, at least, he _thinks_ he does) that she was worried sick the last time, thinking that he wasn’t going to wake up. When she doesn’t leave right away, he tries to offer her what probably comes across as a weak smile.  
  
“Really, I’m alright,” he says. “Thank you, Abigail.”  
  
“If you’re sure,” she replies, hesitant. She gives him a watered down smile in return, and pats him on the shoulder. “You holler if you need somethin’.”  
  
“Sure,” he says.  
  
There’s just another moment of hesitation, but Abigail heads back towards Pearson’s wagon, casting one more look over her shoulder. Once she’s out of his sight, he sighs and looks back to the damp spots on the canvas roof.  
  
Quite plainly, Arthur has no idea what to do. He’s never been much for those flowery bits of prose that inhabit all manner of pages of Dutch’s books, but he’s inclined to think that it feels a lot like a restless, half-waking night. Abstract bits of a dream play out as though they’re inhabiting the same space as the dreamer; they’ve always been a part of the real world and the dreamer’s only just now noticing that things have always been that strange. At some point, Arthur’s sure that someone will come and shake him awake, although where he’ll be when he wakes is beyond his understanding.  
  
He rolls onto his left side, pushing his left arm up under the pillow to raise his head a little in order to get a better view of his surroundings. In some way, he half expects for there to be a glaring flaw in the camp, something to tip off the nature of the dream.

What he sees is the Horseshoe Overlook camp exactly as he remembers it. Even though it didn’t serve as home for very long, and the next few camps even less so, Arthur knows the layout well enough to be able to walk through it blindfolded. It’s at a rougher stage, evidently before enough money’s been poured into the coffers to afford a few more yards of fabric of insulation for the tents. Everyone’s still chattering their teeth and curling up on wood pallets and sorry excuses for bed rolls. He can smell the acrid burnt coffee that he joked was probably scraped off the underside of a wagon. Soft conversations drift in and out of his attention, all in the voices of those living and dead.  
  
Arthur deliberately turns his head to look at the domino table and Hosea hunched over a newspaper, the collar of his coat turned up to his ears as he blows warm air into his fist before turning a page. He has a dented cup of coffee in front of him, and the scraped remains of breakfast on a beaten tin plate at his left elbow. For a long while, Arthur just watches him, half expecting Hosea to dissipate like mist in the sunlight. Hosea resolutely doesn’t, and instead clears his throat and squints at an article, running his thumb along the lines in interest. It’s so _normal,_ so completely average in every way possible.  
  
Before, when Arthur heard Hosea’s voice at his back, he wasn’t sure how to feel. It still felt like a dream, as if so long as Arthur didn’t face him, he wouldn’t have to run through that gauntlet of grief again. Now, seeing Hosea there, clear as the morning, something rings in his heart like a damn church bell tolling the time.  
  
Time that he _has._  
  
He levers himself upright, minding the rush in his head. His boots have been carefully tucked under his bed, and he not-so-carefully shoves his feet into them before standing up. His balance is good, and the earth doesn’t feel like it’s inclined to fall out from under him. Once more, he runs his right hand over his torso, from his stomach to his left shoulder where he’s become accustomed to having a mangled candle wax-like scar for months.  
  
Nothing. Not one section of skin out of place that wasn’t already disordered to begin with.  
  
Arthur walks the short distance to the domino table, although he’s still apprehensive that all of this is just going to end up as some big ruse. Hosea’s eyes flick up from his paper before he flicks his wrist to fold it in half. His smile comes with a familiar, warm ache that Arthur isn’t ready for, and he realizes how _much_ he missed Hosea.  
  
“Arthur, my boy,” Hosea says with a smile, and _damn_ is it good to hear his voice. “Good to see you topside. How’re you feeling?”  
  
“Fine,” Arthur replies, taking an empty crate as a seat across from Hosea. He tries not to stare, just as much as he tries not to think of the last time he saw Hosea alive. Both are difficult to maintain, so he clears his throat and bobs his head while casting his gaze off to the side. “Think I’ll live.”  
  
Hosea sets the paper on the table and weighs it down with the plate before resting his hands on his knees. Arthur looks up to see his expression—a damn familiar one. It’s a smile, but there’s concern just under the surface, straining at the edges. “Charles brought you back lookin’ a mess. Thought I’d have to cart you off to Valentine myself,” he says. Then, he laughs in a short wheeze that comes out as a cloud of vapor in the cold morning air. “Offer still stands, and we won’t even get into trouble while we’re there.”  
  
Arthur can’t help but return the laugh, enjoying Hosea’s presence for what it is. “Nah, I figure I’ll be okay.”  
  
“You know, I said something similar when Charles hauled you back here. Everyone was getting all wound up, and I said that it’d take more than a tree branch to take you out,” Hosea says. Then, he leans forward, appraising. “Provided it _was_ a tree branch.”  
  
It takes a moment for Arthur to get what he’s insinuating; something that he couldn’t tell the gang, or suggesting that Arthur was doing something that he shouldn’t. Not that Arthur’s ever been that private on his goings-on, since he learned long ago that safety often meant letting at least one person know where to look for him if he didn’t come back in a decent amount of time. Ironically, it was Dutch who instilled that particular lesson in him.  
  
“Don’t rightly recall, actually,” he says honestly. It’s easier to say that than to explain the dream, or explain... anything; two maybe-deaths included. “All I remember was ridin’ in the dark, so it could’ve just been me bein’ a fool, as usual.”  
  
Hosea seems to be satisfied with this answer. “Fair enough, even though you scared the heavens out of half the camp lookin’ the way you did.” Then, he furrows his brows. “You sure you’re alright?”  
  
“Of course. Why?”  
  
“Just— Ah, nothing. Maybe me just getting too worked up in my old age. I worry about a hell of a lot more things now that I did as a young buck.” He looks up thoughtfully. “Although maybe I could have afforded to worry more back then. I would’ve gotten out of a lot more trouble if I had.”  
  
Again, it’s deceptively easy to fall back into old banter, the same old rhythm that Arthur remembers keeping with Hosea on long nights or on the trail. He smiles despite himself, against that same gnawing thought of _what if_. “And here I was thinkin’ that you were the reasonable one.”  
  
“Oh, I was,” Hosea says. “See, I would have gotten in a lot more trouble if it hadn’t been for Dutch. One silver-tongued idiot is good, but _two_ silver-tongued idiots is even better. As a collective, we did good on keeping our necks out of the nooses. Granted, once you and John came along, we had to redouble our efforts so to speak, but I think we did fairly well.”  
  
The mention of Dutch is almost enough to make Arthur flinch, like there’s this dam of memories from before, and it’s made of something permeable as permeable as paper. Like with Mary Beth, Kieran, and John, there are all sorts of little vibrant vignettes trying to stage themselves in his head, full with contingent casts and every gory detail included. Dutch presiding over their camp like a judge at court, Dutch’s eyes sparking with something unreadable and unfamiliar as he hashes out yet another scheme, Dutch looking thoughtful as Micah whispers into his ear, Dutch—  
  
Mountains, blood, sunrise. Arthur can’t tuck that bit away no matter how badly he wants to.  
  
“Arthur?”  
  
Arthur looks up, finding a pinch between Hosea’s brows and a downturn of his mouth. It takes a moment for Arthur to realize that he must have gone off in some sort of daze, staring at nothing. “Uh, sorry,” he says, rather lamely. “Just... thinkin’.”  
  
“About what?”  
  
“About—” About _what_ , indeed? There’s no easy way to answer it, but Arthur’s still more than aware that the longer he dwells on the oddities of what’s going on, the more time he’s wasting. He already ended his second chance badly, and he has no intent on botching the third. That in mind, he clears his throat and does what he should have done the first time. “Just somethin’ I wanted to ask, really,” he says.  
  
“What would that be?”  
  
“Your advice.”  
  
Hosea looks mutedly surprised, brow raising. “My advice? On what, exactly?”  
  
“On—” Arthur makes a half-hearted gesture at the camp, more or less pointing to where the chickens are poking and scratching at the ground. “On everything, I guess. What we should do from here, or what we could’a done differently in Blackwater.”  
  
It’s what he should have asked and followed _long_ ago, before everything had a chance to become an unrighteous mess. Granted, he had listened to Hosea before, and they had had plenty of conversations about their con in Blackwater, and their opinions on how the gang continued to operate. At the time, however, Arthur was still in the mindset of listening to Hosea, but doing as Dutch said. There had always been that overarching thought that Hosea had extolled plenty of times; they would come through on the other side, as they always did. Dutch would come up with a plan that would work, and regardless of their misgivings, it would all turn out right in the end. Blind faith would be rewarded, because up until Blackwater, it hadn’t yet led the flock astray.  
  
At the end, though, Hosea _knew._ It must have felt like the prickle of electricity before a lightning strike, only Hosea refused to get out of the way.  
  
And more than once since then, Arthur’s wondered how different it could have been if they had just listened to Hosea. If he would have pushed his point and said that what they were doing was wrong, that the way they were going was that same road to hell proverbially paved with good intentions, things might have gone differently.  
  
Things _can_ go differently, something tells him. At this point, there’s really no other option. The only way it can go from here is either better or, at worst, exactly the same as it had.  
  
Hosea is looking at him like he isn’t sure what to say. He still looks surprised, but that shifts to thoughtfulness. His brow furrows and he looks down at his folded newspaper and cold, scattered breakfast. “Well, I’ve already suggested we lay low, like Dutch said,” he says slowly, ironing out his thoughts. “Not stirring up the pot too much, not blowing our cover so soon. What we had in Blackwater was nice and easy, just quiet enough that we probably could have gotten away with a decent amount. It wouldn’t have been like what was on that ferry, but it would’ve been enough to live on for a time.”  
  
“Enough to head west,” Arthur adds.  
  
“Oh, absolutely. If all was said and done, we would have made enough for the gang to run on for a few months until we got back out to Nevada or somesuch. A comfortable amount, nothing outlandish.” He shrugs, still looking down at the paper. “But people didn’t have patience for that, I suppose.”  
  
He’s got every right to be bitter about it, Arthur thinks. They left Blackwater with less than they started with, and further away from where they wanted to be. Hosea doesn’t say as much, but Arthur knows it’s on his mind. He must have been thinking it the last time as well, and Arthur wonders how much it wore on him to see them being pulled further and further away from that goal with every move.  
  
“And now?” Arthur asks.  
  
“Like I said. Keep our heads covered, don’t stir up trouble,” Hosea replies. “Wouldn’t hurt to pick up a few clean jobs just until we establish ourselves and figure out this landscape. Valentine’s not exactly a metropolis prime for any big heists, but it has to have a few hidden gems in it. Towns like this always do.”  
  
Arthur nods, even though he’s already fairly sure where all these hidden gems are. There’s always Limpany and its hidden treasure, as well as the business behind the doctor’s office. It’s damn near daunting to think of all the places he had explored the last time, and how they’re virtually untouched now. But Hosea’s right, and it wouldn’t do to go running off now to try to gather it all in a mad dash.  
  
“You think we could do something here like we did in Blackwater?” he asks. “You know, long con or somethin’? Maybe not with the payout we was going to have, but something similar.”  
  
“You could do a long con anywhere in the world if you tried hard enough,” Hosea replies with a conspiratorial smile. “I used to joke with Dutch that you could drop me in the heart of the rainforest and I could con my way out by the end of the month.”  
  
Arthur smiles. “I wouldn’t put it past ya,” he says.  
  
“Anyway,” Hosea continues. “It’s possible. Take a gander or two at the local population, scent out where the money’s flowing—least of all to say the sheep shit. No lack of that around here. Provided everyone learned their lesson on patience and isn’t chomping at the bit to do something extravagant and stupid, we could stand to make a bit of change before we move on.”  
  
Immediately, that conjures up whole scenes of the gunfight in Valentine, which Arthur decides he’d like to avoid. For that matter, he’s been in enough dime novel-worthy gunfights to last three lifetimes.  
  
“So, clean jobs,” Arthur repeats.  
  
Hosea hums in agreement. “Legal stuff, for now. Bounty hunting, courier work if need be, that sort of thing. Nothing wrong with a picked pocket or two, and maybe some shill work down the line. We just don’t need to be making any _more_ big scenes.” He gives Arthur a knowing look at that last point.  
  
Right. Fistfighting with Tommy feels like it happened ages ago. “Gotcha,” Arthur replies.  
  
“Nose clean, head down,” Hosea reminds him. It’s an old phrase that he used when Arthur was a teenager, hungry and impatient, unable to keep himself in check when the only thing between him and a fistful of money was a single locked door. All it does is remind Arthur of what he lost, and what he’s somehow gained back.  
  
He smiles. “Ain’t a kid no more, Hosea.”  
  
“Then stop making me worry over you like a kid,” Hosea says, and it’s nothing but fond.  
  
Arthur’s missed this more than he’s realized; Hosea’s advice and his wisdom, as hard-earned as it’s been, and his humor, his presence in Arthur’s life that’s been more influential than Arthur’s own father had ever been. There’s this part of Arthur that wants to tell Hosea everything, to flat-out say that he’s died before and he’s come back to life twice now, and he’s not sure where to go from here. If there was anyone he could go to, it’d be Hosea. And if there was any way to phrase it that wouldn’t sound completely off the walls mad, Arthur would do it.

 

☾☼☽

 

Later in the afternoon, Arthur rides for Valentine. He’s prodded at a bowl of stew to figure out if two rounds of resurrection somehow improved Pearson’s cooking (it hasn’t, but Arthur eats it anyway out of a sense of duty to Pearson, who he’s learned to appreciate), dressed himself and relished in the fact that everything fit the moment he put it on, and quietly saddled Shiloh while keeping his eyes off everyone at the camp to the best of his ability. Aside from Hosea, seeing other people in camp—formerly dead or deserted—is making his sense of reality uneasy. It’s easy to do, considering most people are caught up in their work. He’s up on Shiloh and out as quick as he pleases.  
  
Almost. Charles is on guard duty, after all.  
  
“You okay to ride?” he calls.  
  
Arthur slows Shiloh’s trot as he passes by Charles’ station. Charles is dressed in a loose powder-blue coat and a black scarf tied in a knot at his throat, looking far more comfortable than anyone else at camp. He seems almost casual, leaning up against the base of a tree with his rifle balanced on his left shoulder.  
  
“Sure,” Arthur replies. “Right as rain.”  
  
“Didn’t look that way earlier.” Despite his misgivings, Charles shrugs and looks out toward the half-hidden trail. “Headed anywhere interesting?”  
  
“Thought I’d scurry off to New Austin, do a little sightseein’.”  
  
“Funny.”  
  
Arthur grins and runs his hand over the crest of Shiloh’s mane, letting the coarse white hairs flow through his fingers. “Nah, me n’ her ladyship are going to Valentine. See if we can get some honest work.”  
  
He doesn’t have to look up to know the exact expression Charles is giving him. At this point in time (and what a thought that is), they’ve only known each other for a few months. However, Arthur feels like he’s known Charles for years. “Honest,” Charles repeats dryly. “You?”  
  
“Me,” Arthur affirms, though not without smiling. Charles has no idea. “Though if it makes you feel any better, I’m off to see if there’s any bounties posted. So, honest, but bloody.”  
  
“Mmm. That’s more what I was thinking.” Then, Charles looks back at him. “I’m not so sure about bounty hunting after all this, though. You were looking like death warmed over earlier. Hosea was—”  
  
“Talking about takin’ me to Valentine. I know,” Arthur replies, and then laughs when Charles gives him an odd look. “I talked to him earlier.”  
  
“He thinks you’re good to go?”  
  
“I should hope so, since he suggested bounty hunting in the first place. ‘Sides, I’m only plannin’ on checkin’ if there are any.”  
  
Charles nods and switches his rifle to his right shoulder. “Fair enough. You know there’s a doctor in Valentine, right?”  
  
“In case I swoon?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
Honestly, Arthur’s had enough of doctors to last him a good long while. “Yeah, I know,” he says. Shiloh stomps in place and whickers, and he pats the side of her neck. “You still headin’ to Blackwater with Javier?”  
  
“We’re heading out tomorrow. Was gonna head out earlier, but I had to scrape you off the ground first, so you put a dent in the schedule.”  
  
Shit. Again, word for word from before. Arthur sighs and keeps stroking Shiloh’s neck, feeling her skin twitch under his hand. “Huh,” is all he says this time. He stares down at the gold of Shiloh’s fur, and tries not to think too hard on it again. “Well, be safe on your way out.”  
  
He expects Charles to tell him that he’s welcome to help, like he did before. Instead, he hears Charles clear his throat. “Yeah, you be safe, too,” he says.  
  
“I’ll do my best,” Arthur says, giving him a short two-fingered salute before turning Shiloh back toward the trail. The fact that time is chafing against itself leaves him with a sour feeling in his stomach, and his head feels liable to float clean off his shoulders again. Better to take to empty trails and the plains, if only just to clear his mind after everything. Or, at least make the attempt.  
  
After riding back and forth from places as far removed from one another as Lake Isabella and Saint Denis, the ride to Valentine feels far shorter. It feels like it’s just part of the dream he’s not entirely unconvinced he’s going through. No one’s chasing him down, and there isn’t a flurry of bullets at his back. The weather’s fair, the wind calm, and there’s not much to occupy or distract him save for the occasional rabbit or turkey that hurries across his path. He keeps Shiloh’s gait even and smooth, not feeling any particular need to press her for speed, even if he thinks she’d enjoy the exercise. All he can think of is her at the end, after he felt it was only right to go to the end of his life on the horse that he started on. He doesn’t dwell much on those last minutes with her, since that ache is still somehow fresh. Instead, he tries to focus on how healthy she is now, how much she feels like she’s in her prime.  
  
“Hopefully gonna keep you this way, girl,” he tells her, watching her ears flick backwards in attention. “You, n’ maybe all the rest of ‘em.”  
  
He still isn’t completely sure how to approach the situation, aside from maybe handing the hotel owner a few dollars and telling him that he has dominion over the bath for the next few hours, with the only allowances being more hot water when he needs it. He just needs time to _think,_ to piece together everything in his head in a way that fits.  
  
He’s alive, and so is everyone else. He’s functional, as healthy as he can be, not bogged down by an illness bent on wearing him down to dust. The Pinkertons have their trail, but Leviticus Cornwall isn’t hounding them just yet. There are no Braithwaites, no Grays, no politicians with more money than brains (well, there are those, but Arthur hasn’t had the displeasure of meeting them yet), and Micah— Well, Arthur’s not enough of a masochist to dwell on him just yet. He needs to be off his horse and preferably within reach of a bottle of bourbon before he tackles that particular issue.  
  
If anything, it shows him how far this road stretches forward. Those last months were so full of activity, for better or worse, that it’s jarring to think of how far back he’s been set. It would probably take him a good hour, if not more, to try to write out a list of everything he remembers.  
  
“Shit,” he says, to no one in particular. Maybe Shiloh, maybe the robins watching him from the trees, maybe the wind itself. He reaches up and runs a hand over his face before sighing through his nose and resting his hand on the pommel of the saddle.  
  
Where the hell does he even start? He’s already checked his satchel to find that he has twenty dollars, which is fairly decent, but nothing compared to what he had. Not that he cares a great deal for it now, after all that’s happened, or rather, hasn’t happened yet. That’s still a tangle of confusion.  
  
And God _damn_ is it tempting to think of just going out and finding all those nooks and crannies full of gold bars and nuggets, slowly assembling that amount again until he has more than enough. Then, taking all that, gathering up those last good people that he knows he can trust, and heading west without daring to look back. They would have more than enough to get all the way to the west coast, to settle comfortably wherever they feel like without fear of the law hounding them. With everything that he’d had, he could have settled in comfortably for the rest of his days, and so could John and Abigail, Sadie, Charles—  
  
No. No, it’s never that simple.  
  
He comes up over the second set of railroad tracks, coming within sight of the train station. There’s a fine cloud of kicked up dust from the road, and Arthur can already catch the stench of animals wafting on the wind. He hears dogs and sheep, the whickers and neighs of horses, the shouts of people.  
  
Valentine. Quiet, just falling this side of easygoing, not half as raucous as he thought when a gang isn’t tearing it up one end and down the other. He turns Shiloh up the road closest to the stables, watching a little boy chase a big black and brown mutt across the road, laughing high and loud while the dog barks in excitement. The gallows are empty, the nooses swaying on the wind without a neck to catch on. There’s still the magic lantern tent and a bored-looking ticket seller, and the butcher further up the way trying to extol the virtues of his venison. People shout and clamor, and wagons creak their way down the muddy main thoroughfare while the builders work on that place that Arthur never saw finished. Arthur’s eyes go right to the furthest corner, where there are still pocks and dents from footprints and table legs.  
  
Where Thomas Downes must have been standing only a day or two before, beseeching alms for the poor and being the damn fine do-gooder that Strauss detested.  
  
“Jesus Christ,” Arthur says under his breath, immediately turning Shiloh towards the Saints Hotel, getting that corner out of sight as quickly as he can. Not unlike Micah, or Dutch, or any of the worst bits of his memory that burn in his chest as a reminder, he tries to block out Thomas, Edith, and their boy. He’s already paid for it once, and it aches anew to think of doing it all over again. Time and place; not now, not here.  
  
_When?_ asks that little traitor voice in the back of his head as he swings off of Shiloh and hitches her to the post. _You’re back, you’re alive. You can fix things. So, when?_  
  
He curses again and sniffs, patting Shiloh’s neck while she bobs her head and turns her ears this way and that. On instinct that he’s held since Saint Denis, he checks his pockets at the strap of his satchel with a cursory sweep. Everything’s intact, and so far, there hasn’t been a reason to think otherwise. It’s not something he’s willing to unlearn, though, just for the sake of relearning again later.  
  
Stepping into the hotel, he finds it exactly as he remembers it, as though so much could have changed over a few months. The same man stands at the desk, smiling under his mustache, his eyes lightning up in recognition. “Ah, welcome back!” he says. “Good to see you’re stickin’ around Valentine, even after all that bad business with Tommy.”  
  
Arthur fumbles with his satchel and nods. “Yeah. He, uh—” He pauses and sniffs again, pulling out a dollar and a quarter. “Bad business, sure. Um, can I get a room and a bath?”  
  
He sets the money on the desk and the man smiles. “Of course. Up the stairs, on the right, second door before the end of the corridor. And I’ll tell one of the girls to start up a bath for ya. Anything else?”  
  
Arthur considers it for a moment as the man hands him his key, before nodding. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m uh, not to be disturbed. Got a lot of work to do.”  
  
The hotel owner is undoubtedly used to being asked that exact request, so he just smiles and nods like all’s right in the world and there’s more to it than a permanent resident in his hotel that can’t move his damn bowels (which Arthur still doesn’t want to think about). “Of course,” he says. “Bath should be heated up and ready in about twenty minutes or so, and that’ll be that until this time tomorrow.”  
  
“Thank you kindly,” Arthur replies as he pockets the key. He heads up the stairs in a way that’s just like muscle memory, and ignores the disturbing straining sounds coming from 2A. He opens the door to 2B, closes it behind him, and promptly locks it.  
  
Then, he sits on the edge of the bed, pulls out his journal and a pencil, and starts to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr](http://radiojamming.tumblr.com)


End file.
